


Discovering Boldly

by Merfilly



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Episode Related, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-16
Updated: 2011-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-15 17:02:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the wedding that wasn't, Jim tries to navigate logical courses</p>
            </blockquote>





	Discovering Boldly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [salable_mystic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/salable_mystic/gifts).



After the wedding that wasn't, Jim didn't know if he should be more or less guarded around his First Officer. Spock was as professional as ever, so thoroughly Vulcan in everything, that the moment in med-bay was almost completely dismissed as a false memory or a remnant of that primitive state of mind Spock had been in. After all, Vulcans just didn't do emotions.

Never mind that T'Pring had evidently known desire. That she had felt rebellion. Or Jim could even ignore that her chose Neanderthal-Vulcan boyfriend had expressed a variety of emotions in his lack of control and composure.

Because Vulcans didn't feel.

Jim chewed on that fact in his mind for a few ship-days, that meandered into ship-weeks, and eventually it had been a couple of honest to the stars months.

All of it passed by calmly, with Spock reminding them all at every offered chance that he was very Vulcan, very logical, and emotions were for humans and other species.

It left Jim hurting on one side of his ego, and entirely too curious on the other.

`~`~`~`~`

Jim made a careful move in the tri-d chess game, watching Spock's face as he did. He knew his friend would never betray any expression or reaction, but Jim had never stopped doing this. Really, he did need to con the Vulcan into playing poker one of these long voyage evenings, just to see him take the table with that unreadable face. Of course, teaching Spock that bluffing and lying were not exactly the same would take finesse.

"That was an ill-advised maneuver, Captain," Spock told him, making his own move, and allowing Jim to take in the whole board. Jim frowned, realizing that what he had thought would set him up to take Mate in four would actually now give Spock Checkmate in three. Jim being Jim, though, immediately started scrambling to find the maneuver that would let him undo the disaster, as he had no concept of surrender in his personal view of life.

"Just goes to show you, Mister Spock, that I can't always get behind that logical brain of yours to find your sneaky angles," Jim commented, studying the board instead of the futility of trying to read the Vulcan.

"I am not given to being 'sneaky', as you put it, Captain," Spock said. "What I do speaks for itself, in all of my actions."

Jim looked up, that sentence playing against the past, and yet... did it mean what Jim wanted it to mean, or had the Vulcan learned hyperbole? Maybe Spock had locked off those events, as a selective protection of his memories.

"All?" Jim dared ask, briefly wetting his lips with a quick dart of his tongue.

Dark eyes looked at him above alien cheekbones. "I do not typically make case statements with exclusions, without naming said exclusions."

Jim took a deep breath, and tipped his king in defeat. "I'll think on today's game, and consider my next moves closely," Jim told Spock, rising to go in search of Bones, whiskey, and self-control, never minding that two of those rarely matched up for the third.

`~`~`~`~`

Bones had denied him both a chance to talk it out and the whiskey, contending with a small outbreak of Denebian Fever in his med bay. Jim had retreated to the bridge instead, where Scotty had looked at him in surprise.

"Captain?"

"Why don't you go investigate those harmonics in the port nacelle?" Jim suggested.

"Captain Kirk has the conn," Scotty said instantly on that. The third shift bridge crew buckled down at this rarity, not wanting to be found lacking by their captain. They weren't given to being anything but the best; Scotty demanded it, but they rarely were under observation by Starfleet's youngest starship commander either.

Jim did wander the bridge, checking on their work, listening in at Communications, looking in on Science, and investigating the current Astrogation charts. All of it was well in hand, letting him sit down in his command chair and think.

Maybe Spock was waiting for him to make a new move? Was that it? And how did one go about seducing a Vulcan? Whimsically, he wished he could talk to Amanda Grayson, but oh wouldn't that be hilarious? 'Hello, ma'am, can I have advice on seducing your son?' just didn't seem like a great conversation opener.

He pondered further, greeting shift change with a nod to each of _his_ bridge crew, who were surprised to see him already in place instead of touring departments on the ship. Spock raised one elegant eyebrow, but Jim ignored it, and carried on with business as usual.

`~`~`~`~`

Spock answered the door promptly, and Jim was staring up at that face he had memorized a long time past. "May I..."

"Indeed." Spock moved back, and Jim slipped in, letting the door seal off what was possibly going to be a catastrophe, and was definitely a private moment.

Kirk paced over close to where the harp was upon its stand, taking in the higher heat of the room, the lowered humidity, and how it all combined to strike his memories with fear and worry. The fear had been for Spock; the worry only for how to best correct the no-win situation this time. Trust Bones to have come up with the solution when he couldn't.

"Spock, I have been thinking about our...friendship," he finally said, turning to see that Spock had taken the chair by the desk, hands steepled in contemplation. Jim took that as an invitation to come perch one hip on the desk and settle there. "In light of more demonstrative, shall we say, moments, on your part."

Spock was silent for a long moment, his eyes fixed not on Jim or his hands, but to some point far away... or far within.

"Spock, if I'm stepping over the line..."

"Jim, you are not."

The negative and the use of his personal name almost knocked Jim off the perch he'd made, and he looked at Spock with a million unasked questions in his eyes.

The answer Spock gave was to unfold his hands, and slowly extend one to rest lightly on Jim's nearer arm. "I would not have presumed for my sake, allowing you to dismiss my exuberance to the past, if you did not seek that which I had extrapolated as a satisfactory condition to the future of our relationship."

"In other words, if I didn't like you the same way, it could all be blamed on the _plak tow_?" Jim asked, gently and with as much regard for Spock's culture as he could. Spock nodded once, fascinated apparently by the way Jim's other hand came to rest on his own. "Guess it all gets to work out in the end, then, Spock." Through that reinforced physical contact, the open affection of Jim's mind brushed Spock's senses.

"You rarely ever fail to acquire some means to your ends, Jim," Spock said, dead-pan. The only difference this time was that Jim could feel the slightly teasing stir of the intent in it through the skin contact.

"I'm looking forward to applying that to this voyage, Spock," Jim told him, eyes sparkling with merry delight as he smiled.

The thing he would treasure forever was that very slight smile in turn.


End file.
